That simple statement, and the corollary that North America is driven by cost, says a lot about marketing, culture, and the current state of crisis where marketing finds itself in North America.  I don’t see that same crisis in Japan. In the U.S., consumers tend to favor low-cost machines even if they are slightly heavier than other models, noted Douglas Krone, chief executive of Dynamism.com, a company that sells imported technology. Those in the U.S. are driven by business needs, he said, and tight budgets tend to favor inexpensive, but more weighty, laptops. By contrast, Japanese buyers in both the … Continue reading "Japan is driven by consumer demand"

Light but broad piece from Banktech on channel management.  Its a broad based review of the current situation, and the shift to customer centric from product centric.  Nothing new, but good overview. The development of banks’ overall channel strategies has been anything but deliberate. Delivery channels have grown from need and technological advances, and banks’ channel strategies have evolved in response. But now that financial institutions are juggling numerous channels and the multitude of ways in which they touch customers, many banks are actively looking to integrate those delivery channels more strategically. Source: http://www.banktech.com/printableArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=5XLYKAHUPHCO0QSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=193402868 Summary: channel development driven by technology … Continue reading Integrating the Channels – steps in the evolution

 At first glance I find this statistic unbelievable.  Then the last sentence got me … people are using Paypal to get around bank fees, and that makes sense given the high ethnic population in parts of UK.  Whether its a third or not, it makes sense there is a group sending money abroad using Paypal. Person-to-person payments outfit PayPal says that it now has over 15 million account holders in the UK, representing over a third of the adult population. Paypal says UK growth is being fuelled by sharp increases in online spending and by demand for low-cost remittance services … Continue reading Finextra: PayPal claims a third of UK adult population

Great question, that I cannot resist. can an Internet-only bank work? Source: BankerVision: Egg Internet bank So I will leap in to the fray with an answer than might be expected from someone who is bullish on internet banking. I say yes it will work. I say this despite the evidence against.  We have the evidence, mbanx, Wingspan, and possibly Egg.  But let me qualify.  The first two failed because their costs were higher than their revenue. fulfillment costs:  account opening kits cost a lot, and getting them to customers is expensive account opening costs:  accounts opened but many customers … Continue reading BankerVision: Can an “Internet only” bank work?

I started to reply to a great comment question to this post on Wal-mart, and realised this deserves a post. The question from Jeff was “Can this in any way be used as an end run around the opposition in the United States?”, and Jeff started it off on his blog here. ______________________________ I have to think it cannot be a co-incidence that Canada and the US are right beside each other. However Canada is tiny (32 million pop) at 10% of the US in population. When I listened to Jane Thompson speak she went out of her way to … Continue reading More on Wal-Mart and their Canadian banking entree

 At the Forrester conference in May, I blogged about Wal-Mart trying to get into banking in the US, which has successfully been lobbied into submission. So here comes the Canadian angle. Wal-Mart Canada Corp. is looking to expand into the financial services business, a potentially lucrative growth area as the retailing price war intensifies over food, clothing and other consumer staples. The big-box giant recently hired Trudy Fahie as vice-president of financial services at Wal-Mart Canada, a role created for assessing the retailer’s options in the sector. Ms. Fahie is the former vice-president of financial services for American Express Canada. … Continue reading Wal-Mart eyes banking in Canada

David at Infoworld succinctly sums up the problem with CRM. The customer benefit is not there. Quick. When was the last time you remember being pleasantly surprised by how effectively a company used data about you to improve your customer experience? Source: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? So What? I wrote about the frustration with CRM recently. David goes on to touch on why this problem exists. Based on surveys it appears that corporations have simply not decided to make good use of customer data a priority, mostly because no single person or part of the organization owns the issue. He … Continue reading Putting data to work for the bottom line